My 3 Month No BS weight loss program
How I lost 22kg in 3 months, with a simple no BS diet and workout plan.
“Where did that 22kg go?”
December 31st 2022 10PM
A rather chubby 18st 8lb man is sat alone in a Premier Inn hotel room, mopping up the remains of a chicken jalfrezi with his last piece of keema naan. Empty Cobra beer bottles sit on the cheap wooden desk beside the purple signs, the discoloured lamp, and the greasy crumpled brown and white paper bags of his latest Uber Eats order.
His folded belly rolls droop over the belt and waistband of his 40” waist jeans as he grabs the disgusting remote control and turns off the TV.
Enough is enough. Time to battle the bulge. New year new me. Happy birthday earth, and all that bullshit.
The “diet” is on.
April 2nd 2023
Weighing in a 15st 1.7lbs, wearing very loose-fitting 34” waist jeans, and feeling awesome. I now give myself compliments in the mirror, and post selfies on Instagram everywhere I go.
Here’s how I did it. This is not advice, this is just what worked for me, I’m sharing this to give others some ideas that may help them avoid the constant barrage of nonsense that comes from the so-called fitness and weight loss industry. An industry that needs fat people.
Don’t do what I say, don’t follow my advice, consult your doctor.
Diet
I hate the word diet. I didn’t see this as “a diet”, I see it as a short period of weight loss that I needed to go through. I don’t even like “weight loss”, this wasn’t that, it was fat loss, I had a bit of fat to lose.
That said, on this “short period of fat loss”, my “diet” was simple, it was high protein, high fat, low carb. Real food, no BS.
Days 1 to 4
Breakfast, lunch & dinner.
I kicked things off with a 4 day fast. After that beer-filled solo curry night in the Premier Inn, the next thing I ate was late in the evening on January 4th. I did a 96-hour fast consuming nothing but water, salt, black coffee, and vitamins. It’s just 96 hours, get it done. 48 hours, 72 hours, 96 hours, whatever. You’re not gonna waste away, you’re not gonna diiiiiiie, you’ll be fine.
I did everything I usually would, including working and training. The first 24 hours feel a little strange, but after that, it’s plain sailing. The body goes into some kind of fight-or-flight mode and days 2, 3, and 4 feel absolutely fine. You’ll likely be full of energy, and mentally alert, as the in-built remnants of a prehistoric you wants to go and hunt the next meal.
Stop making excuses, and kick things off with a fast. I lost 8 lbs in that first week.
Month 1
Carnivore diet-ish.
The rest of month 1 I spent on something close to the “Carnivore diet”. I ate almost entirely meat, eggs, and salt. I skipped breakfast most days, and occasionally skipped lunch, but always had a huge dinner. I kept the food choices simple, I like it that way.
Dinner was usually a combination of liver, steak, chicken, sausage, bacon, salmon, or eggs, with salt, cooked in butter. I didn’t track calories but I was consuming roughly 1500-2000, eating until I was full.
Months 2 and 3
I added some greens
For months 2 and 3, I reintroduced some carbs and greens, with vegetables and salad now accompanying lunch and dinner, and a big bowl of oats almost every night. Again I kept things really simple, eating the below meals pretty much every day.
Breakfast - 6 eggs fried in butter with 2 pieces of air-fried bacon.
Lunch - Some kind of meat, a steak or similar. Fried in butter, maybe with a basic salad.
Dinner - A load of salad and veg, whatever was in the supermarket reduced section this week, fried up in a frying pan with liver and/or beef, and turned into a big bowl of broth by adding salt, pepper, stock, and varying spices.
Pudding - A big bowl of oats, maybe 100-200g, soaked in boiling water for an hour. I stir through a couple of eggs, microwave for a couple of minutes, stir through some whey and eat it just before going to bed.
Pudding.
Drink
I aimed to drink 5l of water every day, often with a sprinkling of salt in it, and I got through a fair amount of black coffee. I need that to keep death away. Other than that, nothing. No alcohol, no fizzy drinks, no squash. Nothing. Water and coffee.
Supplements
I took a few supplements along the way. A daily multivitamin, something we should all be taking, and a good old extra dose of vitamin D. I’ve taken these every day for years, not just for this diet. With my pasty white Viking genetics, it pays to keep topped up on vitamin D. These things are cheap as chips on Amazon, they’ll ensure you’re filled up on the essentials during a weight loss stage, and help support strong bones, teeth, muscle development, immune systems blah blah blah.
I know they work, as I chew enough beef jerky to feed an army, without issue, and my immune system is yet to surrender to the Rona. So far… although I credit that to the salts I snort more than the vitamins.
Either way, get some vits down ya.
In addition, I added whey protein to my oats and sometimes as a shake before a workout, and also creatine, I added a scoop of this to the oats too. The cost of whey protein has gone through the roof since I last purchased it a few years ago, so I just picked up whatever was the cheapest. This stuff from Amazon is WHEY cheaper than anything else, a few people told me it was full of crap, but it tastes good and it’s by far the cheapest whey protein powder I could find.
It’s “diet”… yes yes, I know that’s bullshit, and anything with diet in the title should be avoided, but I make an exception for this, as it’s cheap and does the job. The protein count is low, so you’ll want to chuck a couple of scoops in most things, but at that price, give it a go.
Cheap whey protein powder
Cardio
None. Zero planned cardio, I avoided anything aerobic as much as possible. I decided to focus on training rather than exercise, in a bid to limit muscle loss and avoid feeling beat up. I continued with my normal daily activities, which involve a little walking, and still got up into the mountains on a few occasions over the 3 months, but even with that, I chose routes to limit cardio to a minimum.
I’m not advising that you do no cardio. I’m just saying that I did no planned cardio and that I kept my aerobic exposure to a minimum, feeling that what I already do was adequate for this short period of time. And in reality, my squat and deadlift AMRAP (As many reps as possible) sets, are quite intense cardiovascular workouts in themselves.
You don’t have to run yourself into the ground with cardio in a bid to lose weight, beat yourself up, or hammer your joints into the cold concrete pavements or the belt of a boring treadmill. Avoid those things like the plague, IMO. Focus on good quality training that will encourage your body to lose fat and maintain muscle mass.
Ultimately, without drugs, you’ll lose both, but tilting the balance in the favour of maintaining muscle mass will be a huge advantage in the long run*.
My preferred form of cardio, climbing a mountain to eat a steak.
*Definitely not recommending a long run, BTW.
Training
The plan here was to loosely follow Jim Wendler’s 531 program, with no additional work, the ‘I ain’t doing jack shit” version. I rotated through 4 workouts every 8 days or so, workout day, rest day, workout day, and so on. Occasionally adding a rest day here or there if I felt any soreness, I prioritised rest and recovery over activity, but kept the intensity high.
The Wendler 531 program uses the 4 basic barbell exercises, squat, bench, deadlift, and press. The basic version that I run uses just 3 sets per workout, the 531 sets, I was in an out of the gym in no time. I did the absolute minimum effective dose, with heavy weights and low reps. The idea was that I wanted to do enough to tell my body that it needs to lose fat, not muscle mass. A typical week’s workout looked like this, this was my week 1 -
Monday - Squat
87.5KG for 5 reps
101KG for 5 reps
114KG AMRAP (as many reps as possible)
Wednesday - Bench
65KG for 5 reps
75KG for 5 reps
85KG AMRAP
Friday - Deadlift
103KG for 5 reps
119KG for 5 reps
134.5KG AMRAP
Sunday - Press
44KG for 5 reps
51KG for 5 reps
58KG AMRAP
This is a bare-bones dodgy and basic percentage-based version of Jim Wendler’s 531 training program that Jim Wendler himself would definitely not have suggested I follow. I used it because I like the percentage-based system and it’s nice to be told what to do. All I had to do is follow it. No questions asked. No ifs no buts.
The above example is cycle 1 week 1, and it changed throughout. I won’t go into that here, but I highly recommend taking a more detailed look at 531, it’s a great program. I’ve used it a lot in the past.
You’ll learn programming and principles, in a no-BS way that I approve of.
Here’s the Ebook - Wendler 531
In addition to Wendler 531, I started to challenge myself weekly with what I dubbed “Chin you 2023 weight loss”. Every Sunday I’d attach the amount of weight I had lost so far in 2023, in iron plates, to my belt, and do some chin-ups. It came about after a few people mentioned I’d lose too much muscle mucking about with fasting. I gathered that if I could still chin the total amount of weight that I could when I started, then I hadn’t lost much muscle. By the end, I was doing chin-ups with 22kg on my weight belt, they were tough, so I’d lost muscle mass, but not too much. Testament to my approach.
BTW, while we’re talking training, try these smelling salts, they’ll knock you into another dimension and add 20kg to your squat while definitely not probably maybe possibly not protecting you from dangerous respiratory viruses. *not medical advice.
Hellfire Smelling Salts - Do it
Sleep
I’ll add this in because even though we all know about it, it’s important and underrated. I aimed for 8 hours of sleep per night, minimum. It was easy to achieve, with the lack of alcohol and all those oats before bed, I was sleeping like a rock. I tried to follow the rule “sunlight before screen light” in the morning, and no screen before bed, with varying levels of success, but that helped too.
Get your sleep in, no excuses. It’s the most anabolic thing most of us can do, and it’s safe and free.
Discipline
The main thing for me was to keep it simple, and to have consistency and discipline in all things. Each to their own, but what worked for me was to start off fasting, add a bit of intermittent fasting, a simple low-carb diet, a basic low volume high intensity barbell program, no alcohol, and a whole load of discipline.
The idea that you can’t do it is some weak-ass bullshit that you should be ashamed to even consider, never mind speak. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine, but don’t pretend that you can’t do it, that’s some weak ass shit. Just get on with it. Pick an end date, and get it done.
Here’s my weekly log of how it went for me.
Won’t you just put it all back on?
Yes, kind of.
I’m now a bit too light for my liking, and I’d rather “have the ability to do” rather than the “appearance of being able to do”, so I’ll be gaining weight slowly and getting my squat and deadlift back up to some reasonable numbers, my strength has definitely taken a bit of a hit with that 22kg weight loss.
I think Boris the Blade was right when he said “Heavy is good, heavy is reliable”, it’s often as true for men as it is for guns.
That, and only bellends walk around showing their abs, so I may as well cover them up with an enjoyable layer of carb-induced fat. I’ll be eating and drinking well, and following Wendler 531 up to a 250kg deadlift. I may even “do” some cardio.
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I write about photography, gear, adventure and now fitness, apparently. I’m also quite fond of long discussions about the best pot noodle flavours and who holds the record for the most eggs in a single bowl of oats.
